66 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



and some others,* deserves the epithet of dark, because 

 serfdom, violence, and superstition existed, is more than 

 questionable, considering that slavery still existed in America 

 thirty years ago, and that violence and superstition were 

 almost as prevalent in the XVI Ith century witness the 

 Thirty Years' War and the religious persecutions as they 

 were five hundred years before. And if we look at the 

 society of the times, we come to the same conclusion. The 

 social conditions described by Boccaccio and Chaucer, which 

 are so striking in many ways, and which reveal so much 

 sense, politeness, wit, and elegance, could not have come 

 into existence in one day. They could only be the results 

 of a lengthy and steady course of moral and mental training. 

 The beautiful correspondence and exquisitely refined poems 

 of Petrarch would, by themselves, suffice us to arrive at 

 the same verdict. Had we such pictures and such works 

 alone before us, we never could apply, if we look at them 

 rightly, the term " dark age " to that in which the society 

 they represent existed. In Art also architecture and music 

 especially the progress effected before the Xlllth century 

 set in would lead us to a similar conclusion. But when, in 

 addition to the rulers, thinkers, and writers just mentioned, 

 and to the social state and artistic work we are alluding to, 

 we find a host of great men exploring every field of human 

 knowledge, and making countless beautiful discoveries, it 

 then becomes absolutely impossible to apply the words 

 Dark Ages to the times in which they lived certainly not, 

 at all events, to the centuries which preceded the Revival 

 and gave birth to the progress in the scientific arena of 

 which we have presented a noble roll. It is therefore as 

 well that we should protest against the indiscriminate use 

 of them, if we wish to see those times under their true 



* Damiano of Ravenna (d. 1072), Gaunilon of Marmoutier (d. iioo), 

 Anselm of Laon (d. 1117), Hildebert of Tours (d. 1133) all Realists ; 

 Champeaux (d. 1121), Hugh de St. Victor (d. 1140), Robert Pulleyn 

 (d. 1150), Lombardus of Novara (d. 1164), John of Salsbury (d. 1180), 

 Simon of Tournay (d. 1200), David of Dinant (d. 1200), Alain de Lille 

 (or de Ryssel), (d. 1203) all famous Nominalists ; and after them for a 

 century, a number of Aristotelians, Averroists, Thomists, Scotists, and 

 Lullists. 



